Put your clothes ON when you dance...

I have peculiar reading habits. While I love a good read of something new on the train/tube/bus/in bed and consume ridiculous amounts in very short time periods (a habit I never lost from college days) I reserve my 're-reading' matter to, yes you guessed it, the WC. Ok, I've gone too far haven't I? Well sod it...
Yes, I will pick at old texts, reacquaint myself with loved paragraphs and generally bone up again on stuff that I've forgotten. This is why reference books are great, as well as short story collections and collections of essays. Robert Christgau's 'Rock Albums Of The 70s' is a doozie, as are Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Anthony Lane's 'Nobody's Perfect' and my beloved hardback of JG Ballard's 'Complete Short Stories'.
So it is that I've recently been dipping into Frank Zappa's deeply-flawed-but-still-fascinating 'autobiography/rant' The Real Frank Zappa Book and was amazed at how , well, CLEVER he was sometimes. Not just with the black dots and lines, but in his analysis of our hell-in-a-handcart mentality when it comes to CULTURE. I was particularly struck by his chapter for his Dad, which not only puts forth the views that the music business has only been rubbish since young people took over in A&R (because they're far more conservative than their forebears) and that we all stand a good chance of dying a truly entropic death by ever increasing slavery to NOSTALGIA, but also this little gem:
'No Change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to. No musical innovation will ever succeed on a large commercial scale without the full involvement of the industries which profit tangentially from it: clothing and 'merchandise'.
Wow. Frank Zappa said that. Really...
Maybe this explains why, in London, the so-called cultural capital of this country, everyone under 35 dresses EXACTLY THE SAME. Homogeny is king (unless you count the idiots who think dressing like Russell Brand are being somehow radical). Boring clothes? Boring music scene. Simple.
This is gonna sound stupid and mawkish, but every day I miss FZ a bit more. I really do...